Of Pain and Loss
by Tsunade's Apprentice
Summary: The lessons that Kakashi has learned about the different forms of pain a shinobi feels in his life. Slightly angsty but not majorly. Oneshot.


Hey there everyone, I'm back!(most of you are probably thinking 'who are you?') I decided to write this little piece... It just kind of came to me and it seems remarkably better than my disastrous last piece of work...

This piece is a slightly angsty look at Kakashi and how he's learned about pain and loss... I didn't have a plot when I started, just the last line as a goal. I'm not sure if the title suits it or not, sorry about that.

I'm not looking for sympathy or anything like that by pointing this out, but I am ill at the moment so if you notice any mistakes could you please point them out to me. Feel free to shout at me while you're doing it, but still, point them out and I'll correct them. As for Kakashi's age.. It's just a guess.

Anyway, enough from me.

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, if I did Sasuke would have died a long time ago and Sakura would never have existed...**

Pain was a sensation that Kakashi had grown used to over the years he had been a shinobi. He had felt it in so many forms; the steady ache of stiff muscles, the sharp, halting pain of pierced skin, the burn of poison, the pain of losing he people dear to him.

He had become a genin at the age of five. The training he had recieved off his father had been intense and had introduced him to the physical pain he would endure as a shinobi.

His father had also been the first person to show him the pain of loss. When he returned home that day, just six months after graduating from the academy, to find his father lying in a pool of his own blood on the tatami floor, he had felt an emptiness inside him that had gradually filled with a dull ache that lasted for months.

He didn't cry when he felt pain. Instead he felt angry at himself -or others- for being so weak as to allow himself to be hurt in the first place.

When, years later, he had lost his team-mates to the war he had been fighting since before they could even write their own names, he felt a new kind of pain: one that stemmed from guilt.

He was a chunnin, they had just been genin. Their safety had been in his hands. He had failed them, the girl who never faltered to help anyone who needed it and the boy who cried 'because he had something in his eye' who was going to be the greatest ninja who ever lived.

Nothing prepared him for the pain he suffered the night the kyuubi attacked. He heard the cries of pain and grief of the people surrounding him, shinobi and civilian alike. He remained untouched by everything but a few shards of wood, coming from what had once been a forest. All that changed the moment he saw Gamabunta appear from a puff of smoke in the middle of the forest, the tiny silhouette of a man on his back.

There was only one possible outcome for a shinobi who was both brave and foolish enough to stand up to the Kyuubi. The bodies lying on the forest floor were proof enough of that. Kakashi knew that not even his sensei, the Yondaime Hokage, was strong enough to stand up to the demon attacking their village.

Moments later, as his sensei's body fell towards the forest floor, Kakashi felt the worst pain of his life. As he rushed toward the body of the man who had been like a brother, or maybe even a father to him, Kakashi felt his world crumble.

All through his life the pain he had felt had been easy to categorize, it only ever had one cause: physical injury; betrayal; guilt.

This was different. There was guilt and betayal but there were others too. There was the fear of not knowing how to live out his day to day life alone, betrayal because his sensei had always promised that he would never leave him alone, anger towards his sensei for letting himself die and guilt for watching it happen and not stopping it. But more than that there was just pure, indescribable pain at knowing that he would never have another conversation with him, would never see him smile, would never see him fight, that his sensei would never be there again to give him the unwavering support he had grown used to over the years they had spent together. He could see no end to the pain.

Years later, looking into the bright blue eyes of a twelve year old genin, Kakashi realised that pain had never faded. He had simply learned to live with it.

End

A big thank you to InosBane who pointed out a mistake to me. I've corrected it now, thanks for your help XD


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